Cloud startup Tier 3 raises $10 million

Tier 3, a Bellevue upstart that helps businesses manage IT infrastructure in the cloud, has raised $10 million in new financing. Backers of the 50-person company include Ignition Partners and Madrona Venture Group, two of Seattle’s most prominent venture capital firms.

Intel Capital, the venture arm of the semiconductor giant, led the round.

“We are big believers in the enterprise cloud computing opportunity and Tier 3 continues to make strong progress on product and market leadership in this area,” said Madrona’s Matt McIlwain. “With $10 million of new capital they will continue to aggressively invest to take advantage of the market opportunity.” Tier 3 often gets classified as a “virtual private cloud,” combining both infrastructure-as-a-servive (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS)

Adam Wray

The deal follows an $8.5 million round in the company last year, bringing total funding to $18.5 million. Tier 3, not to be confused with another Seattle area startup by the name of 3Tier, is led by former Limelight Networks, Amazon.com and Akamai employee Adam Wray.

We’ve reached out to Wray for comment about the funding, and we’ll update this post as we learn more.

The venture round is one of the latest for emerging IT infrastructure companies in Seattle, following venture deals for Apptio, Opscode and ExtraHop Networks. Those companies often are overlooked, but they are forming a strong backbone in Seattle’s startup ecosystem, essentially creating a new breed of IT infrastructure companies.

UPDATE: Here’s the comment from Tier 3 Vice President Wendy White on the new financing: